To Still My Beating Mind.

"The cutting room is a cruel place, where writing that may have cost blood to commit to paper is kneaded and pummelled like so much insensate clay."

Jasper Rees, "Blood and ink on the floor," Independent, April 13, 1997

I began this blog in May, 2005, with the intention of creating a working manuscript of the history of left dhimmi fascism. I finished that first draft long ago, and now I think it's time to let this effort rest in peace at last. I have much editing and revision to do on this and two other manuscripts that have lain in the dust too long. If ever they are to come to life, then I must work to make them live.

As the new year begins this blog ends. I wish to thank all of you who contributed so much to my understanding of the problems we face and the solutions we might gainfully employ to make our nations and our lives more worthwhile than they will be should we continue languishing in self-hating dhimmitude and Left fascism as a matter of unconsidered course. I am optimistic, and I am enthused about the coming year. I'll meet you there. Meanwhile, I have friends to join for the celebrations of our lives.

Thank you all very much for your efforts and concern.

Prospero:
You do look, my son, in a moved sort,
As if you were dismay'd: be cheerful, sir.
Our revels now are ended. These our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits and
Are melted into air, into thin air:
And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Ye all which it inherit, shall dissolve
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep. Sir, I am vex'd;
Bear with my weakness; my, brain is troubled:
Be not disturb'd with my infirmity:
If you be pleased, retire into my cell
And there repose: a turn or two I'll walk,
To still my beating mind.

William Shakespeare, The Tempest

Best regards, Dag.

It's the Jooooos!

We constantly hear how the biggest enemy of Christianity and America are Muslims.

The truth is that although Muslims do not share all Christian beliefs, Islam is far closer to Christianity than Judaism. I already quoted the obscene attacks made on Jesus Christ by the Jewish Talmud. How many American Christians even realize that the Holy Qur'an of Islam actually defends Jesus Christ and His mother Mary from the hateful slanders of Judaism? As I pointed out earlier, the Talmud claims that the Gospels lie about the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. The Talmud actually boasts that the Jews and not the Romans were the ones who actually nailed Jesus to the Cross. These Talmudic Jews hate Jesus so much that they want to take all the credit for his murder. Amazingly, the Islamic holy book, the Qur'an disputes this Jewish lie and actually defends the truth of the gospel.
http://melbourne.indymedia.org/news/2006/12/134969.php

Melbourne Indymedia is a website produced by grassroots media makers offering non-corporate coverage of struggles, actions and celebrations. Everyone is a witness. Everyone is a journalist.
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Dr. David Duke, author of that fine piece of journalism above, is a contributor to indymedia. Who'd have thought it? Well, we here think that fairly often, like when we post indistinguishable snippets of David Duke and Ken Livingstone as one piece. There is no dichotomy, Left and Right. There are fascists and primitives on the one side, neo-feudalists, philobarbarists, and dhimmis; and there are those who are mostly afraid to speak out against the Left dhimmi fascist conformity that rules our pubic discourse, those being the people I refer to perhaps idiosyncratically as Revolutionary Modernists. I know I'm not like David Duke. I'm not like Ken Livingstone. But they are like each other. The Klansman and the Trotskyite. Iranian hate-fest and indymedia. Me. Maybe you.

Have Pen, Will Travel

Recently our Ethiopian cousins have taken it upon themselves to invade their neighbours, the Somalis, in a large-scale and dynamic war. They didn't wait for months to get U.N. approval that would have meant limiting terms of engagement to meaninglessness, didn't wait for Russian and Chinese vetos, and didn't bring along CNN to monitor each and every outrage committed by national soldiers. The Ethiopian government had and interest in local affairs and took military action to correct what they saw as a threat to their nation and its people. In their case I applaud their decision. I wish I were there to cover the action as a first-hand reporter, in spite of my limited abilities as an objective reporter and my opaque writing style. As bloggers and private citizens we have unique opportunites to present to the larger world our views as untainted by conformities as they might be.

We might not compete as ably with major news producers who give us such brilliance as the copy on a South African mercenary in the early 1970s who was eating a piece of beef jerky when a reporter asked him what it was, to which the mercenary replied: "It's a baby's arm." Yes, the reporter panicked and wretched. We might not be able as bloggers to compete with that kind of reportorial genius. But we might do something else, almost as worthy: we might be able to report the facts as they are without ideological white-washes and flights of morally outraged dramatic fancy. But only if we are there, wherever 'there" is next time.

Therefore, allow me to humbly suggest that we start a travel fund for intrepid bloggers who are willing and able to write clear and unironic prose that anyone can understand at a glance. As a pool of contributors we could perhaps support one blogger's efforts in a place of our mutual choosing. Next year we could send someone immediately to a hot-spot to get what we would like: more or less what we might consider the truth as known to our own trusted colleagues. That might be worth $10.00 from each of us.

We likely pay as much for our local papers, only to be outraged rightly by them. personally I would love to see Pastorius's copy appearing hourly from the heated front. With some co-ordinated effort on the part of many of us if not all, we should easily be able to send someone somewhere to cover our own interests, even if it is without the approval of the U.N. and the French elite.

Our Boxing Day Present

We have our personal lives to tend to on a second by second basis every day of our lives, and it often doesn't leave a lot of time for reflection on the greater world or its people; thus, we rely for the most part on our public intellectuals to give us a broad view of the nature of things as we live in the details. The rotten bastards lie to us as a matter of course. Our universities are filled with ideologues and hate-mongering mediocrities who teach chanting and cliches and deliberate ignorance to teenage sociology students who go through too many years actually thinking they know something more than those who live life in situ. Bushitler, the world's greatest terrorist? Oh, spare me.

Here, from the Chicago Sun Times is the opening of a piece of real insight, and of common knowledge among those who live their own lives in the details without the benefits of a modern Western university education telling them they are exploiter capitalists raping Mother Earth and that they should quit having children and just die. No, here is some real truth spoken to the powerful and influential who won't for a moment let up their diatribes of hatred against Humanity. So here it is:

Lebanese refugee filled with gratitude for America

December 25, 2006

BY MARY LANEY

There is such serendipity in life. Such was the case recently when I stopped into a shop on the North Shore. Inside, I met Jackie, a beautiful, tall, thin, welcoming woman. As we began talking and doing business, I learned that she is from Lebanon, a Christian and married to a Christian from Syria.

I told her I thought her country was beautiful, and her face lit up.

"Oh, yes, it is very beautiful, thank you," she said.

"Why did you come here?" I asked.

"We had to come. They, the Muslims, would have killed us. We had to leave."

"Just for being Christian?" I asked.

"Just for being Christian," she replied.

Then Jackie said the thing that seemed, and was, so serendipitous. She said: "I hope America keeps the pressure on, keeps helping Lebanon. If America forgets Lebanon, then forget it. Lebanon will be lost." Her comment came just moments after I had been in my car, listening to a news report on the radio in which pundits were discussing what would happen if America pulled out of Iraq now.

Jackie told me that the Muslim extremists who have moved into Lebanon and its government push their weight around like members of the Nazi Party. She said they've multiplied their numbers by having multiple wives and many children -- and that they use the media to make certain the world knows that they distribute food to the needy, but hide the fact that they kill Christians and use them as human shields in any battles.

http://www.suntimes.com/news/laney/185297,CST-EDT-LANEY25.article

Read the whole thing at the link above. Not everyone lies to us. The reporter above lets one woman tell the truth. It's something we seldom are allowed to do in the presence of our elites. Who needs 'em! HAMAS is a criminal gang of primitive scum bags, and Palestinians are animal savages. Yeah, and do you get a chance to read that in the daily rag?

Didn't think so.

A Scot went walkin'

A Scot went walkin', and when he walked back no one believed he'd seen what he said.

Eight hundred years ago King Lalibela created a marvelous gift to the world. Often called the Eighth Wonder of the World, Lalibela contains towering churches that were carved from the soft, volcanic tuff in which they stand. Some lie almost completely hidden in deep trenches, and others stand in open quarried caves. A complex and bewildering labyrinth of tunnels and narrow passageways with crypts, grottoes, and galleries connects them all. Within this mystical world, priests go about their daily tasks, seemingly oblivious of the outside world. Standing 38 feet tall with seventy-two pillars, Medhane Alem is not only the largest in Lalibela, it is the largest monolithic rock-hewn church in the world. The oldest of the churches, dedicated to the Virgin Mary, Bet Maryam is the only Lalibela monolith with a porch. The remains of exquisite early frescoes can be seen on the ceiling and upper walls, and there are many elaborately carved details on the piers, capitals, and arches.
www.farhorizon.com/Africa/ethiopia.htm
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Those who wish to practice their Gaelic can turn to the following link for more details of Ethiopian Christianity.
www.s4c.co.uk/nefoedd/nefoedd/prog3.htm
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Some people build up churches by cutting things into pieces and stacking them atop each other, and others dig a hole and leave the core to carve away. Some people write about Ethiopia in Gaelic. And some bloggers don't have a copy of Alan Moorehead, The Blue Nile, but they have two copies of his The White Nile. Some people come across as strange, and others one should just shoot. Our best friend didn't realize till just now he doesn't have the right book, and now can't quote the story of the Scottish explorer who walked to Ethiopia in the 18th century. But I did find a brief reference to James Bruce at amazon.com.:

In the 18th century James Bruce declared that he had been to the source of the Blue Nile. He was brave and determined and a dedicated amateur. Bruce thought the Blue Nile was the main stream and the White Nile was a tributary. Affairs in Ethiopia were nightmarish. The Ethiopian warriors were impressed by the power of his rifle. His book appeared in 1790, seventeen years after his expedition.
Reviewer:Mary E. Sibley
http://www.amazon.com/Blue-Nile-Alan-Moorehead/dp/0060956402
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And more from Wikipedia:

James Bruce, (December 14, 1730 – April 27, 1794) was a Scottish traveller and travel writer who spent more than a dozen years in North Africa and Abyssinia (Ethiopia) where he traced the Blue Nile.

On the outbreak of war with Spain in 1762 he submitted to the British government a plan for an attack on Ferrol. His suggestion was not adopted, but it led to his selection by the 2nd Earl of Halifax for the post of British consul at Algiers, with a commission to study the ancient ruins in that country, in which interest had been excited by the descriptions sent home by Thomas Shaw (1694–1751), who was consular chaplain at Algiers. Having spent six months in Italy studying antiquities, Bruce reached Algiers in March 1763. The whole of his time was taken up with his consular duties at the piratical court of the dey, and he was kept without the assistance promised. But in August 1765, a successor in the consulate having arrived, Bruce began his exploration of the Roman ruins in Barbary. Having examined many ruins in eastern Algeria, he travelled by land from Tunis to Tripoli, and at Ptolemeta took passage for Candia; but was shipwrecked near Bengazi and had to swim ashore. He eventually reached Crete, and sailing thence to Sidon, travelled through Syria, visiting Palmyra and Baalbek. Throughout his journeyings in Barbary and the Levant, Bruce made careful drawings of the many ruins he examined. He also acquired a sufficient knowledge of medicine to enable him to pass in the East as a physician.

In June 1768 he arrived at Alexandria, having resolved to endeavour to discover the source of the Nile, which he believed to rise in Ethiopia. At Cairo he gained the support of the Mameluke ruler, Ali Bey; after visiting Thebes (where here entered the tomb of Ramesses III, KV11) he crossed the desert to Kosseir, where he embarked in the dress of a Turkish sailor. He reached Jidda in May 1769, and after a stay in Arabia he recrossed the Red Sea and landed at Massawa, then in possession of the Turks, on September 19. He reached Gondar, then the capital of Ethiopia, on February 14, 1770, where he was well received by the nəgusä nägäst Tekle Haymanot II, by Ras Mikael Sehul, the real ruler of the country, by Ozoro Esther, wife of the Ras, and by the Ethiopians generally. His fine presence (he was 6 ft. 4 in.. high), his knowledge of Geez, his excellence in sports, his courage, resource and self-esteem, all told in his favor among a people who were in general distrustful of all foreigners. He stayed in Ethiopia for two years, gaining knowledge which enabled him subsequently to present a perfect picture of Ethiopian life. On November 14, 1770 he reached Lake Tana, the long-sought source of the Blue Nile. Though admitting that the White Nile was the larger stream, Bruce claimed that the Blue Nile was the Nile of the ancients and that he was thus the discoverer of its source. The Jesuit missionary Pedro Paez is widely regarded by historians as having been the first European to reach the site; Bruce, however, disputed his claim and suggested that the relevant passage in Paez's memoirs had been fabricated by Athanasius Kircher.

Setting out from Gondar in December 1771, Bruce made his way, in spite of enormous difficulties, by Sennar to Nubia, being the first to trace the Blue Nile to its confluence with the White Nile. On November 29, 1772 he reached Aswan, presently returning to the desert to recover his journals and his baggage, which had been abandoned in consequence of the death of all his camels. Cairo was reached in January 1773, and in March Bruce arrived in France, where he was welcomed by Buffon and other savants. He came to London in 1774, but, offended by the incredulity with which his story was received, retired to his home at Kinnaird. It was not until 1790 that, urged by his friend Daines Barrington, he published his Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile, In the Years 1768, 1769, 1770, 1771, 1772 and 1773, but was assailed by other travellers as being unworthy of credence. The substantial accuracy of his Abyssinian travels has since been demonstrated, and it is considered that he made a real addition to the geographical knowledge of his day.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Bruce
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Right about now most readers are probably saying: "?!"

Yes, it's Christmas, and most people in the Modern world are not likely dwelling on an eighteenth century explorer who walked to Ethiopia. Those of us who are, well, we chuckle, don't we? That's because we know that our fellows in Ethiopia are now at war with jihadis in Somalia, and that we too could be like our friend and mentor, James Bruce. Yes, this new year could see us going to Ethiopia to volunteer to help in the war against Islamic fascism. Cool, huh? You could surprise the kids no end. And your grandchildren would have a marvelous time at school during "Show and Tell" with stuff you send back from the front.

There's no good reason at all why we can't go to Ethiopia and fight with the locals against the jihadis.

All I need for Christmas is a round-trip ticket to Addis Ababa. We can go walk-about, and folks will never believe the tales we tell.

To Love Your Work

Throughout the course of a long life I have rarely held what most people would call a real job. I make the necessary amount of money to survive and to save for my further ridiculous adventures in swamp world, and then I put in my time reading, listening to the living, seeing the wonders of the world. What a great life it is. Often, even in the midst of terror and pain, it simply embraces me and makes me wonderful. I don't know what to make of it, but I sometimes, even often, laugh like an idiot, overwhelmed by the wonder and the mysteries of it all. I have to work at it sometimes, but the cold hard world seems to love me. I hope it's the same with you. Whatever your life's work, I hope it loves you too.

Filibuster for Universal Modernity (2)

In his book from 1971, The Day of the Jackal, Frederick Forsyth writes in passing of Executive Operations, a company known outside the closed world of mercenaries and their dodgy employers only to a handful of journalists and curious folks of some other sort. E.O. provides services for what one might call a niche market but a market that is often more real than most: private security for private businesses and low-rent governments at risk from serious criminal enterprises. In the business of the real world of the living one accepts that there is good and that there is dangerous. It's not a world for the delusional or the sentimental.

This is not a new story, nor is it one likely to go away any time soon or perhaps ever: Executive Outcomes (EO), a private military company (PMC), was founded in apartheid South Africa by Lt-Col. Eeben Barlow in 1989. Controlled by the South Africa-based Strategic Resource Corporation (SRC), EO's role was described by Barlow as offering: "A variety of services to legitimate governments, including infantry training, clandestine warfare, counter-intelligence programs, reconnaissance, escape and evasion, special forces selection and training, and parachuting."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Outcomes

In the archives here one will find numerous pieces on American filibustering and Manifest Destiny, the belief that America was given by God to settlers to expand as far as the oceans and beyond. There are many references to "school teachers with guns," the idea of Modernist filibusters going into the world at large as a project of free enterprise to colonize the world and create an America of of the mind in every place, school teachers living in foreign lands, marrying foreigners, raising children to be American in the world today, backed up with guns. In the face of cultural relativism here there are many posts on the International Brigades of the Spanish Civil War. This blog, my blog, is clear that men and women of the Modern West must go into the world and colonise it all, taking over lands in the same way colonists in early America took the land and moved on the Indians who were here before the Europeans and other world setters came. Life is tough, and it only gets better when Modernists introduce Modernity into lands even against the will of the locals, for whom I have little but contempt. Call me insensitive if you must. I can bear it. Better that than to stand by and excuse the primitivism that passes for culture in our world. So long as parents raise their children to be primitives I will continue to call on school teachers with guns to colonize the world to give children the chance to learn to think for themselves, come of it what may. Yes, I suggest, I exhort men and women to settle in foreign lands, that they raise children to be American in the mind, and that those who would preserve primitivism should be shot if they interfere in the teaching of, for example, germ theory.

Is it a cranky man's daydream? The post below is part one excerpted from Tech Central Station.
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Al Qaeda for the Good Guys: The Road to Anti-Qaeda
By Josh Manchester

Stateless warfighting organizations are all the rage these days. From Al Qaeda to Blackwater, they come in all shapes and sizes and pursue all varieties of ends. Consider: Al Qaeda is an organization funded by a Saudi tycoon's heir, and exists to pursue strategies that are wholly outside the realm of policies of any given state. Indeed, it seeks to topple the governments of many states in the Middle East, from which it draws many of its recruits and funding.

The Mahdi Army is a large, subnational Iraqi militia of something on the order of 30,000. It gives loyalty to a Shi'ite cleric, Moqtada al-Sadr, whose motives are suspect to say the least. Does he merely desire to defend Shi'ites, or does he wish to seize power in Iraq?

Now shift gears a bit and consider Blackwater, the world's foremost private security company. A recent article in the Weekly Standard described its capabilities:

*A burgeoning logistics operation that can deliver 100- or 200-ton self-contained humanitarian relief response packages faster than the Red Cross.

*A Florida aviation division with 26 different platforms, from helicopter gunships to a massive Boeing 767. The company even has a Zeppelin.

*The country's largest tactical driving track, with multi-surface, multi-elevation positive and negative cambered turns, a skid pad, and a ram pad for drivers learning how to escape ambushes.

*A 20-acre manmade lake with shipping containers that have been mocked up with ship rails and portholes, floating on pontoons, used to teach how to board a hostile ship.

*A K-9 training facility that currently has 80 dog teams deployed around the world. Ever wondered how to rappel down the side of nine stacked shipping containers with a bomb-sniffing German shepherd dog strapped to your chest? Blackwater can teach you.

What's the purpose of this organization? In a nutshell, the Standard article reports that it is "supporting humane democracy around the world."

What is the future of the relationship between states and such stateless warfighting organizations as those mentioned above? Why might states come to rely more and more upon stateless proxies? Here are a few reasons:

[....]

Aside from the interests of states, consider the future of private security and stateless warfighting organizations from the perspectives of those organizations themselves. Here are some considerations:

[....]

One of the biggest public relations problems for companies such as Blackwater is the recurring taint of being considered a firm full of mercenaries....

The world of stateless warfighting organizations - many of which will become state proxies - is here to stay. It will be fraught with controversy as the issues delineated above seep in and out of the news.

In the part two of this series, I'll look at what an al-Qaeda for the good guys would look like.

http://www.tcsdaily.com/article.aspx?id=121606A
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Stephen Austin founded the Mexican state of Texas and went on to found the Republic of Texas before it became the American state of Texas. Austin didn't call forth settlers to change the world for the benefit of Mexicans in Texas. He called forth men and women to make money and to live better lives than they lived in Arkansas, for example; and to Texas people went to live and to be alive as individuals. People went to live and to work and to create. Many Mexicans resisted the American settlement of Texas. So what? Today they die trying to go to the America Texicans have made. Take America to the world. Make every place America. And in so doing, not one place will be anything more the same than is New York to Alaska. It takes men and women who want to build for themselves a new life in far away places for personal reasons. It's been done many times before, and it will be done again, in our world at large, in outer space and beyond. There will be those who don't like it. They can stay behind. If they try to prevent it, shoot the bastards.

Happy Chanukah

Shabbat Shalom.

I don't have a menorah in my place at work, but I do have a picture of one of my heroes. He watches over me, as he is watched over too. My debt is unending, and I am grateful for it.

Derek: Mother of all Cartoonists

I was looking for something to go with Derek's graphic, [ http://thestudyofrevenge .] This amazon.com review seems appropriate.

" Londonistan" (Encounter Books), by London Daily Mail columnist Melanie Philips, is an eloquent warning of the dangers of "multicultural paralysis" and appeasing what Philips calls "clerical fascism." She sees Islamist demands for special cultural privileges as a threat to British democracy and documents the rise of anti-Semitism.

http://www.tcsdaily.com/article.aspx?id=121406C
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On Tradition

Thomas Mann wrote in Munich in 1904:

Strange regions there are, strange minds, strange realms of the spirit…. At the edge of large cities, where streetlamps are scarce and policemen walk by twos, are houses where you mount until you can mount no further, up and up into attics under the roof, where pale young geniuses, criminals of the dream, sit with folded arms and brood.
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Adrift on Denial National Review Online Blogs.

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In his novel Germinal, Zola calls him Stavrogin; in Crime and Punishment, Dostoyeskski calls him Raskolnikov; Conrad writes of him, as do Graham Greene and Hertzen and others. When people spit in disgust a t the idea of revolutionaries and Modernity, they do so with these characters in mind, these repulsive parodies of Humanity, these creatures of Romanticism gone worse. Ours in the Modern West is a Romantic culture, and we suffer from it. Our heroes are creeps.

Our words fail us. Che is not a revolutionary; he's a pretty-boy who killed people. A revolutionary in fact and deed is Francis Bacon. The huge and ever-growing pantheon of revolutionaries does not have room for Karl Marx. Gutenberg and Luther, yes. William Bullock, inventor of off-set printing; Salk, Banting and Best, Madam Curie; Charles Parke, who invented plastic in 1862, and Charles Goodyear who invented pliable rubber, these are people who were not revolutionary but who, like us, live as revolutionaries in the world because our forebearers were revolutionaries indeed. We are not revolutionaries among our own but within the world at large we are the menace that has no bounds. We are Modern. That is revolutionary. many of our own hate it, and they wish to return us to a pre-revolutionary time, one of fascist Romance, of a time when communalist man lived as a farm animal tended by his entitled and privileged superiours. We've had that revolution to free ourselves from feudalism, and there will be no neo-feudalism for us now, not again. Parke invented plastic, but Luther invented the world that made him able to do so. It's not the plastic, it's the ability to think inventively that counts. As important is the right not to have to think at all if one so chooses. One has a right to privacy. One must have the right to say so in public without fear of reprisal. It is revolutionary to be able to think for oneself, to have the freedom to think and to invent new things and ideas. That is Modernity.

The German reaction against t he French Revolution and the Industrial Revolution gives us the very word 'reaction' as a political term. Romance, an English reaction against the Industrial Revolution lead the Germans again to extremes that we today think of wrongly as revolutionary, as ecology, as identity politics, as moral relativism. These things are not revolutioinary, they are reactionary. Today's progressive Left is yeasterday's reactionary Right, and most people can't figure it out. We must, or we will find ourselves in a state of utter confusion about who we are and what we value. This is especially true of the concept of Tradition.

I wrote recently a parody of Revolutionary Modernity. The problem with that is that it's so commonly accepted as real that the parodic elements aren't, apparently, very funny. I wrote of tradition, and now i see that it is true to most people in the West that Tradition is seen as somethink akin to moral and intellectual fly-paper. Only what is new is interesting to them, all else being "so yesterday!" Comes to mind the reduction "DWM." Anything written or conceived by dead white men is seen to be bad, uncritically so, and unarguably so. God help us, we are swarmed by teenage fools with grey pony-tails. People have no better understanding of the term Tradition than they seem to of Revolution. Our most cherished are those who sweat in garrets brooding and smoking pot, dreaming up knew resentments and self-pitying programmes for grant applications. Some of these monsters kill people. We call them revolutionaries, but they are nothing of the kind. Ben Franklin, the man who saved the world from the Dark Ages with the invention of electricity, is a revolutionary. A Traditionalist.

Below we see Charles Henry's take on Tradition.
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Tradition is like cooking, it's not automatically bad (unless it's my cooking!) and it's not automatically good; it's dependant on How it is what it is.

I view tradition as necessarily abstract, a thing existing in adaptable principle, not as absolute rule; tradition must possess a slight vagueness to it, so that there may be room for adaptation.
Your example of a man having to take off his hat to enter school, suggests that the tradition is having the humility to show respect for learning: it is the principle of the thing. It is not a Rule that one must wear a hat so that one may take it off upon entering a school, or that there must be schools built so that there be things to take one's hat off of upon entering, or that armless men must be given hat-doffing machines in order that they too may be made capable of showing respect, of participating in the tradition to do so.

Is it not the case, that the more meaningful the tradition, the more it is laid down in principle rather than rule. When Moses brings down the commandments, they are all outlined in principle, rather than explained in detail, requiring us to rise to the challenge of interpreting them. That's a respect for the student that any teacher can learn from.
"You shall not murder", as a principle, makes us have to reason when killing is not murder. "Honor your father and mother", as a principle, makes us esteem that which came before us, while being grateful for our existence, and makes us reason how that may be done: by simply repeating that which our parents did, or by adding to their experience… by progressing from their contribution, using it as the starting point. Sometimes the honor will come from repeating, and sometimes by departing, from the parents example. To tell which is which, we need to think of "honor" in principle, not rule.

"Having no other gods before me" is a great procedure for remaining humble, a necessary ingredient for learning (the moment that someone thinks there's no longer room for improvement, that corresponds to the moment they begin to decay); as well it helps us avoid the danger of idolizing fellow humans as somehow incorruptibly perfect… which is the height of human arrogance. It doesn't need to be taken literally, accepting the old-man-with-a-beard ritualized image of a heavenly father. It can be followed, as I sense you have followed it, in principle rather than as a rule, and remain a beneficial code to live by.

As humans engaged in a trade or craft or living off our skills in some way, there will always be someone more skilled than ourselves, either in our past or right alonside us in the present, or coming along unexpectedly in our future. We're all in some glorious "middle", because of the existence of progress. This we are wired as human beings to forget, yet nevertheless capable of remembering, courtesy of the invention of ritual.

By ritualizing a tradition, it supposedly makes the tradition's founding principle more attainable, as acting out a role in a play should make an actor sympathetic to the character being portrayed, whether hero or villain. Where ritual fails us is when the physical no longer stands in for non-corporeal ideas, and becomes the end in itself. It is meant as the means to an end, and when it becomes the end in itself it loses its purpose and fails us as human beings.

Tradition, I firmly believe, is necessary to humanity, in that it is part of the proof that we are human and not animal. For example: Tradition makes us dress in a way that ennobles the people with whom we are interacting, suits and ties being merely the present form of the ritual; the five senses that animals possess omits humanity's "sense of occasion".
Tradition is to eat food by raising it to your mouth and not lowering your mouth to the food, to not chew with your mouth open, siting up straigh yet leaving elbows off the table, actually having a table to eat at… all in accordance with our attempt to ennoble dining, by humanizing it, raising ourselves above the animal way of eating our daily sustenance.

Believing that there's something better to become, is our fundamental tradition as human beings, and we struggle generationally to remember that and to understand it's implications.

We can follow these traditions in principle, as you do, and be made better for them. The more they are taken as Principles, rather than Rules, the more universally beneficial they may become.
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Our Gnostic elites forage at the fringes of reality and they rule our discourse with their scrounged findings. We must see them for who they are, creatures of ugly dreams and evil delusions. New ways of expressing old hatreds is not revoluitionary. It is sentimentality, unfortunately another word commonly misunderstood. Tradition, as Charles points out, is not new, it is renewable. It is a stability in revolutions of our beautiful Modernity. Brooding Romantic haters are not worthy of our time, and we must actively stop paying attention to them. We could benefit from paying attention to some of our recently discarded traditions.

Paean to Household Cleaning Products

As the two university professors approached the gates of the school, the visiting Englishman doffed his hat. The American asked why he'd done so. The Englishman said: "In Britain it's a tradition that e take off our hats as we enter the gate to the university." The American paused briefly and then said: "As of today it is now a tradition here too."

I don't come to the thought of tradition via the cautious wisdom of Edmund Burke. Rather, I see in tradition images of tiny coffins. Burke confuses me, but the sight of dead children is starkly clear. I think I'm not alone or even in the minority in seeing tradition as reaction, as hide-bound repetition of entrenched privilege, as entitlement, as exploitation of the ignorant by the elites, of misoneism, as, for example, the Taliban. Tradition is a hatred of and destruction of innovation, of creativity, of exploration, of questioning, of individualism, of personal choice. In tradition I see the endless repetition of ignorance that leads to the total closing of the Human mind to improvement, to progress, to betterment, to continued existence of Human life itself. In tradition I see a desperate clinging to power by the corrupt, the savage, the insane. I see "traditional cultures" so beloved of the Left as the worst of Human experience and possibility. I see dead children dead due to their mothers not knowing and not being able to know of germs, mothers who fetch water from streams chocked with shit, mothers cooking with water bobbing with turds, women washing their clothes, themselves, their children in sewage; and I see tiny coffins. One doesn't interrupt the ways of a traditional culture unless one is a horrible neo-colonialist such as myself, a racist Yanqui imperialist. That children die because parents are too incapable of thinking in sequence is not of import to the philobarbarist Westerner. No, what matters to them is the fetish of "tradition." It is the philobarbarist whose head I would remove and shrink on a stone in the name of my own tradition had I my evil way. Tradition is whimmitude, is slavery, is sadism, enslavement, torture, murder, and ritual murder. Tradition is revenge, is fury, is Irrationalism, arbitrariness, and rote. I have no liking of tradition.

Tradition is more than what I see it as, though the definition of tradition in terms of Judaic rites is arcane to me, removed from my grasp of living, and not to be bothered with other than to be accepted as the way of friends in their privacies. Tradition is something only a 21 year old should be allowed to accept.

I see tradition as a mental and emotional slavery. There are some, perhaps many, who see revolution as Che Guevara, as wild-eyed lunatic killers bent on imposing on the people dystopian nightmares and mass pogroms. I see revolution as household cleaning products. I see revolution as germ theory. I see revolution as flush toilets. I see the banalities of a clean floor as the ultimate in revolutionary victory over reaction.

Allow me to stop here briefly to indulge myself in some rather fine poetizing;

"Ode due Toilet"

A fine man of History and dapper
Is our universal friend John Crapper.

Crapper is a hero without vanity;
He put back the needed sanity
Into sanitiation.

We can now continue with my understanding of Modernist revolution, at least until I am again caught up in this passion for cleaning products that makes me versify so profoundly.

Like most people, I use Mop and Glo as hair tonic, toothpaste, and shoe polish. But by chance I have discovered a use for it that exceeds all others: I don't actually like the taste of Mop and Glo at all, finding it enough to make me gag in the morning when I brush my teeth with it, which lead once to me gagging it up all over my floor. I bent down and swabbed it up only to find it made my floor both clean and shiny. A miracle! I love the stuff.

I also love Windex. I used to wash my dishes with it, it leaving my wine glasses absolutely spotless. Now I also I spray it on my windows and wipe them with a sheet of newspaper. The glass comes out clear and shiny too. Life really is good!

And it gets even better, friend. I discovered Tidy Bowl. I clean my toilet with it. Oh, yeah. Life. It's the best thing going that I know of. Much of the reason for it is cleaning products. I'm a fan.

Floors, windows, toilets. There are so many places on Earth that I've lived where such things don't exist that when I moved to Canada and could take them for granted I nearly fell over from shock. I sometimes forgot about the ordinariness of doors and windows and floors. And cleanliness? Live in a jungle for a few years to come to fully appreciate it. I love Tidy Bowl. Flush toilets turn me on so badly I want to remarry just to have someone to share the joy with. In fact, I want everyone on the whole planet to have a flush toilet, windows, and a floor one can mop clean. Hardly anyone has such things, and there are many in our Modern world who think that's a good thing. That wouldn't be me. I am a nut for household cleaning products. Call me a revolutionary if you will, and you'll find I say "Yeah, baby."

Having clean water to wash a tile floor is revolutionary in our world. Having a flush toilet is a profoundly moving experience. Having windows that keep out bugs and snakes and filth blowing in the air is supremely challenging to the traditionalists who would have people living like an anthropologist's wet-dream phantasy. Clean people are healthy people, and healthy people can and do ask "Why?" That is the end of tradition.

The Left fascist move to an imaginary pre-lapsarian Eden of equality and mindless bliss is a move to tradition, in my understanding of the term. It is communitarianism, slavery of mind and body, of violence, of disease and death. Tidy Bowl, Windex, Mop and Glo. It is so trivial that only when you live without knowledge of such things is it revolutionary. And it is revolutionary. It is Modernity itself. Long live this revolution and the people who are clean and healthy because of it.

In deference to those who are traditionalists still, I offer this prayer to the gods of my life:

Our man who art Oats, Quaker be thy name.
Hail Aunt Jemima, full of nutrition.
Blessed is Betty Crocker among women.
Thank you God for the extra strength of Mr. Clean.
And amen to vivisectionists who wantonly murder lab rats.
For truly we are blessed to live in our beautiful Modernity.
Thank God!

Hip Gnosis

Hip Gnosis

We sit and watch a train wreck in the making before our eyes, this destructive course that Europeans are on, and we cannot do much but be sickened and horrified by it. The collision between two powerful forces is happening as we sit, and there is only a helplessness and sickness on our parts, there being nothing we can do to stop the coming carnage the Europeans so blithely watch with us. Europeans, though, don't seem to grasp the problem of the collision. They seem to be in a state of hypnosis, entranced by magi who play them for fun and the amusement of the elite at a Follies show.This hypnosis I rename "Hip Gnosis."

For those of us with a sadistic sense of humor, the situation in Europe must be highly entertaining. It has all the comic elements of the Roman arena, terrified peasants huddled together awaiting the lunge of lions who will rip them to pieces-- for the amusement of the crowd. Europeans sit in blissful and stupid ignorance as the rest of us try to shout warnings they cannot hear. Those in the loge seats laugh their heads off, no doubt. All that one can suggest to account for the bewildered stupidity of the Europeans is hypnosis.

I call this European state of stupor "Hip Gnosis" to call attention to the fact that most Europeans seem to think they are morally superior to all other people, too hip for the crowd of red-neck Yankees and Republican imperialists who don't know the difference between the long-stemmed wine glass and the short-stemmed. Europeans seem to be caught up in a state of -- which?-- moralistic nihilism or nihilistic moralism? All of it is nothing more than a hideous pose of poor actors, of sleepwalking creatures guided by the most evil miscreants of our time, the gnostic fascist dhimmis of the Left. Yes, the gnostic elites have hypnotized the vast majority of Europeans. Even Toto can figure out this scam; but Europeans, so addicted to their hipness and moral superiority, a bit of a limp after the past century, are determined to play out this hypnotic ritual, knowing, (they must,) that yesteryear's white and red fascists are today's gnostic Left fascists. But it's so hip to say the gnostic lines.

The lions? Well, they too are part of Nature, besides, they won't hurt us because we gave to Greenpeace. We're hip, we're gnostic.

I call it Hip Gnosis.

Phaitheism

I live by the sea, and many times in my life I've lived below its level; but rergardless of where I find myself, even if it be for years, I am a mountain man of mountain people, a barely covered savage, a mountain ranging pagan at the core of my soul. In my heart of hearts I still live in the Rockies, the Appalachians, the Grampian mountains. The atavism of my existence is clansman Highlander, layland Riever, sea-going Berzerker, but always in my blood is the mountain air and the sight of afar. Today and for most of my life all of it is clouded by atheism. My own are wild, and the depths of theology shouldn't be any concern to us. We aren't just pagans, we are killer pagans. And in the West of our Modernity many of us have turned to commerce, leaving ourselves empty and disillusioned. When my especially distant relative said "Thank God war is so terrible for otherwise we should love it too much," he turned his face to me and I saw him snicker.

I live in a phantasy life of commerce and good behaviour. I smile and make some money, pay the rent and go to the opera, and then I flee into the wilderness to meet my own in combat of various terrible kinds. Oh ho! I got some big, deep scars! But the worst wound ever I suffered is the death of my gods. I have some reckoning of Modernity and normal living with people who think rationally and who are decent and ordinary folks. My gods embarrass me. I hate them for it, and I abandon them. For making me do that I hate them even more. So I'm an atheist.

I'm not an atheist because I'm a dedicated logician, a devoted rationalist, a man dogmatically committed to Reason; I'm an atheist because I don't have the imagination to see beyond the tableau of my indifferent gods in the endless empty skies. My god is the highest of the dead, ruler of fighting men, mount-born, flame-haired, blue-bellied smashers and rippers exultant. My god is the god of fighting men who fought their way to bloody death to exist alone in the endless empty skies forever. I live a quiet life in the suburbs, work at a slight business of buying antiques to sell at a profit. I am a boring man. My god is indifferent. I can't even believe in him and his own. I close my mind's eye and gaze into the endless empty skies, and I don't even hear mockery from the depths. There is nothing. There is only unechoed Atheism.

I run my fingers over the finest silk and make my offers, my banter, my gambits, and all the while I am attuned to the shrill pitch of the Highland pipes and the rush of the surging river through the glen as my feet fly across the heather to charge in the heights of joy, the singing claymore arcing, targe banging, the crack of bones and the shrieks of pain filling the cloudy skies like rain. "Well, sir, I could take two at the price you offer, but that would be the death of me as a trader. Let's have more tea."

I drag my sorry self from the slumbers of night to face the dreary dawn of another dull day, and I battle the forces of self-interested traders like myself. They, like me, look into the depths of the endless empty skies and long for knives and edges and man-to-man meeting of the mind in blood and abandon. We see in each other the smiles of dead dogs on the roadside. It's hard sometimes to believe I do such things for a living.

I was Cypriot, Ion Allogenes; I was Dutch, Jan Eycks; I was Manx, Yn Greeley. Wherever I am it's not where I'm from, a placeless man. My name is a joke each time. I am a foreigner, Mr. X, gee really. I scoff at the laws of Man's made motions and go where I will as I can. I stare stupidly at the laws of restriction, and I come and go. The gods are indifferent, and the joke appears to be on me. I shrug. There is no higher law than motion.

Then, in my wandering way, my atheism has encountered faith. I have traded in numerous idols of the marketplace over the long years, and I have encountered faith at a bargain many times. Believing it to be of little or no value, I passed it by. Then, in my wandering way, I stumbled, near on a year ago, into the caesura that is phaitheism. I wake up trembling in a sweat. My faith in the indifference of my gods in the endless empty skies is shaken. I waken to words in the darkness. I'm nervous. My former certainty in my own banality crumbles and leaves me stumbling unbalanced, desperate to clutch at the gods who do not notice and would not care.

I sit with men of Faith and my small heart is pounded. I do not know. In my atheism I resemble my former loving self the way ashes resemble a fire. My love is the dust of ashes. I trade this for that and that for more for something else. And I wander. I wander why I do not know. I sit with Men of Faith. I stay.

My own hewed stone and crushed men, raised up monuments and laid down the living. I dance naked in the moonlight in the Ring of Brodgar. We are fighting men, and damn the gods who do not care. We fight them too. I raise my fist to shake at the endless empty skies, and in place of my blood- crusted sword I find my hand grasps the cheap silver of shillings. I haughtily stomp on the stone a weak man would use as a pillow; and I run my fingers over fine silk and dream of the glory of a few pounds more or less. My mountain heart could break like the stones of Avebury.

I see the jackals of grief all around us; and I see Men of Faith with faith stripped bare to the bones. I sit in Faith and stare stupidly. Min' yon kin: bloody men of Faith, they set sail and left us and me alone to stare into the endless empty skies of atheism, our backs to the cold stone draining the warmth of life from us. I growl and threateningly wave my fist tightly grasping shillings. I am over-powered by quiet men. I am humiliated.

I kick at the caphrophagic dogs of grant-fueled pity; and I am driven hard to my knees by the sight of Faith. What path is clear through the blood-fed heath? I would go there if I could along that path. The pipes, they call, and I must go, my blood rushing, my eyes filled with hot tears of joy at the thought of battle. I look at my foes arrayed, and I rush up to the mountain heights of my soul. It's then my god turns and laughs, banging his hilt on the targe, the blood echoes across the endless empty skies, and the dead howl and stomp and rejoice in us who will join them, we who are fighting men. Underneath our contempt for ourselves we are fighting men, just down from the hills, awkward in our suits. I hear the pipes and feel the hair on my neck bristle. My shoulders roll and my arms rise up and I rejoice in the coming blood rush.

In my wanderings the God of Job has beheld me. I stomp my foot. I pound my sheild. I holler at the endless empty skies. Job suffers, and I can do nothing for him. My gods laugh at me. I laugh too. Job in his desert suffers, and my gods laugh because I see that my mountain manners bring me to stand by Job as he writhes. The crazed mountain war-blood brings me to stand by faith and fight for it as it is in itself. I'm not Job! My gods are laughing, they stomp their feet, they pound their hilts upon their targes, we all howl.

I live beneath contempt. Give me one stotinki, more manats. I make a few bucks here and there. My life is so unbelievably banal I can't even imagine that I was once a warrior of the mountains. It is only hidden. My own gods do not care. I see Job. If I refuse to see my gods, they do not care. Job's God beheld me, and so too will my own again.

My companions sit by the fire and whisper words of faith. The beauty of the battle is on us. In that I have faith.

That is so Muslim

We survived yet another of our weekly Thursday evening Blue Revolution meetings at Vancouver's central library. This evening, as we chatted and waited for new attendees to join us, Charles pointed across the atrium to a woman being beaten by a group of men. He said: "That is so Muslim."

And sure enough, as the evening wore on, Truepeers stopped us and nodded toward a group on men beheading a fellow whose hands were tied behind his back. John said: "That is so Muslim."

I am usually oblivious to my surroundings, but when I noticed a group of old women mutilating a young girl I found myself saying to the folks at our tables: "That is so Muslim."

After our meeting broke up at 11:30 I decided to pay a visit to our friend Jane, who didn't answer her door because she was being gang-raped. Well, I huffed, "That is so Muslim."

I toddled off home past a gang of young men burning cars along the street, throwing rocks at the police, and gang-raping more women. I heard a passer-by say: "That is so Muslim."

I think Charles has started something that is now out of control. Every time something typically Muslim comes up, such as those events above, I hear people saying: "That is so Muslim."

Pretending none of these things happen? "That is so French."

Poietes

Birds and insects make things, nests mostly, but little beyond that; and animals seldom make anything at all, except beavers who block up waterways with debris to make dams. As builders, animals are mostly slackers. And until roughly 5,000 years ago people weren't much better than the average felt-lined beaver or scarlet pismire or scissor-tailed fly-catcher. Hunter/gatherer people didn't do a lot of construction, didn't make much. They made stone tools and temporary shelters, and they did make pictograms and petroglyphs. It's the latter that separates men from termites, I think. In terms of zero to one hunter/gatherer Man is significant. Beyond that, not much.

The beginnings of agriculture turned man into a beast who had to make things other than temporary shelters and stone tools. Agriculture, in a real sense, pushed man to become a genuine maker, even a poiete, the Greek word meaning a maker, a poet. Yes, Language Man and Pictogram man and Religion Man is a far remove from ants and birds, but it's agriculture that begins the long and perhaps unending move toward greatness. Without the clear sequential narrative of something like the Epic of Gilgamesh or the Iliad Man is not really much more than a biological curiousity adrift in the darkness of space. It's real making of the mind as something universal and both private and public that makes Man something great, and that is poetry.

To know of and speak of Gilgamesh and to pass on Gilgamesh to others is a step into reality unlike that of anything else in our known universe. To make, to poetize, is to create privacy and publicity, that which no other creature can do, and that Man didn't do well till he became the Maker himself. "He" is not me, my privacy being not him, my publicity being something akin and shared. To organise this Other narrative to share with others, that is poetry, making. It comes from Ur.

When every man owns his own plot, as it were, he is himself in his own mind and in the eyes of others who can see themselves as atomic in their own minds' eyes. When publicity is possible it is so because it is comprised of privacies. The conduit is poetry. Religion is a binding; and poetry, the base of religion, is a made thing of individuals that binds. When that religious binding is ossified and policed and atrophied, as it is in the poligion of Islam and the ideologies of the 18th century that so badly inform us today, then man is no longer a maker but is a thing of the hive, a flock peice, higher than a predatory beast in the wild but not the thing of greatness that man is meant to be. The rote-driven slave makes nothing at all. when the one poem, the great narrative is frozen in tradition and fear of change and growth, then the life of the mind of man is wrecked and Man is diminished and made worthless, a mere parody of the poet he could be. Man is then a farm animal.

The Poetry of Man is rightly the moral of the story, writes Dag. To make the metaphor of the Moral as universal as math, surpassing Numbers, that is some great thing. No one can do so or think so if ones privacy is trapped in a publicity of rote and misoneism. It is the fulfillment of man to create the path to the paths of the moral. That makes us, and anythikng short of it, any obstruction of that search for the universal metaphor of the Moral, is a crime against Humans forever.

Come writers and critics
Who prophesize with your pen
And keep your eyes wide
The chance won't come again
And don't speak too soon
For the wheel's still in spin
And there's no tellin' who
That it's namin'.
For the loser now
Will be later to win
For the times they are a-changin'.

Bob Dylan

Join us this evening at the library. We'll talk about many things; VPL, atrium, 7-9:00 pm in front of Blenz.

Permission

A lake without shorelines is a swamp. A man without manners and morals is feral. A society without normal rules of acceptable behaviour, without civil, commercial, and criminal laws, without penalties for infractions, is a snakepit.

Conflating liberal interpretation of the acceptable with personal freedom, with personal liberty and the right of personal pursuit of happiness is to confuse privacy with anarchy. Where everything goes, everything goes. A permissive society is not a liberty-providing society: it is a crime zone.

Since reading some years ago a book by Neil Postman on child education I frequently have a dream in which Oprah is interviewing mothers about their wayward kids. Says one mother, defensively and aggressively: "I didn't raise my kid to be no orthodontist." She speaks just after another lady says: "I didn't raise my kid to be no gang-banger."

If this weren't my dream I'd think I was making it up to put down a point, that a mother must indeed actively raise her child from an early age to be specifically an orthodontist; that such a career choice for a six year old is not natural but is part of a pre-planned life for ones child; and that no one can convincingly claim that a child just drifted haphazardly into orthodontia as a career. Yes, I conclude that the lying bitch in my dream is trying to fool me while I'm asleep. The mother who claims she didn't raise her kid to be no gang-banger is more honest. Likely she did not raise her kid to be feral. Very likely she didn't raise her kid to be anything at all, hence by default he is a gang-banger.

It's my understanding from limited contact with kids and from reading Jacques Barzun, the House of Intellect, that they are wild animals who need to be trained to civility. The greater the training the greater the civility, as a general rule. I have a relative whose parents compromised and now have a son who is an accountant for the mafia. Point proven.

Additionally, having studied Human childhood as deeply as I have in reading Daniel Mannix, Those About to Die, Roman beat masters had to train lions to attack and kill Christians in the arenas. Even wild lions were not naturally inclined to attack helpless people. Even with a great deal of training lions were often reluctant to do so, much to the dismay of the beast masters who were then publicly executed for failure to entertain the crowds. If lions won't attack people without training and encouragement, then it seems that people, even the worst, won't do so without training in ferality. People must learn to act on their innate evil to some extent. There is a natural fear that prevents even the bravest from attacking others until the force of experience shows how easy it is. People have to learn that they can get away with being assholes in public.

"On November 9, 1965, at 5:15 p.m., the biggest electricity failure in U.S history caused a thirteen-hour blackout in the Northeast. Eight hundred thousand people were trapped in New York City subways and elevators for over twelve hours.... Only three deaths were directly related to the power outage...."
Michael Largo, Final Exits. New York: Harper; 2006. p. 54.

1965, a year of terrible racism, sexism, and homophobia. What didn't happen? Is it that niggers, girls, and faggots knew there places in society and stayed out of sight so rednecks didn't attack them on sight in the dark? Fast forward into the "Sixties."

"Another blackout occurred in July 1977, lasting 26 hours, darkening primarily New York City. Tens of thousands poured primarily from the ghettos and went on what Time magazine called an "orgy of looting." Arsonists set 1,837 fires and hurtled bottles and rocks at attending firefighters, injuring eighty and an additional 435 police while attempting to restore order. Two people died from looting and fires...." ibid.

I make the point here that in twelve years people learned they had permission from a liberal society that they had a claim to legitimately attack society to express themselves as oppressed minorities or some damned thing. Is that freedom? Is that liberty?

Fast forward again to France in flames, to yoots burning and looting with impunity. What advantage do they have over their parents who worked for a living in squalid conditions like the parents of immigrants on the Lower East Side of Manhattan whose kids moved uptown? What has permission to be an asshole done for those who burn and loot?

I've written earlier that there is a sentence I call "murder by socialism." Training kids in "feral orthopraxy" is to condemn them to death certainly, if not by their own misadventures, then by the sure reaction of a fed-up populace that will turn out on the darkened streets with torches and pitch-forks yelling, "There's one, let's get him," and he might well be me.

Maybe rational law is a cheat foisted upon the idiot masses by a vast rightwing conspiracy of fundamentalist Christian Republicans with a hidden agenda of socially constructed narratives to trick the masses into obedience while the super rich corporate types rape Mother Nature. I have some serious doubts about that. I could be wrong. But I think I'm right that even the hoodwinked masses have a boiling point at which they might well find themselves pouring next time there's a blackout into the ghettos to themselves burn and loot. The middle classes do not yet feel they have permission to do so, but I think such a time is coming when they will find the courage or the hatred to spring on the helpless and rip and tear like beasts enraged and practiced in killing. The rule of law might well upset some with its restrictions on personal freedoms, but it beats the devil out of mob rule. If, step by step, the middle classes find they have permission to attack the helpless, then the time will come when the mass goes crazy in an orgy of murder. We weren't raised that way but life has a way of teaching us lessons we should not have to learn, that we have permission to contain madness and restore order to our own lives, regardless of the norm of feral orthopraxy.

I foresee a time when middle aged orthodontists say aloud to the average poor bastard shuffling along the sidewalk: "You want your teeth straightened? Well, I'll straighten them for you, you asshole!"

The swamp of today might easily form itself tomorrow into a tornado of reactionary violence. When people give themselves permission to fight against the craziness of liberalism, then there will be a storm of fascism that I do not wish to experience. When we lose the light of Reason then we will see clearly the last flashes of liberalism in the West. Ours will be a new dark age, all of our own making.

The Great is less than the Good.

When a tradesman finishes his apprenticeship he might go on to become a journeyman (Geselle) of his trade, an intermediate stage on the way to becoming a master tradesman. Students do so as undergrads who move on to masters degrees and then to doctorates. The purpose of the training is to become good to the point of being professional. It never worked out that way in practice, not even in the Middle Ages when the colleges trained the clergy at universities, some brilliant scholars remaining forever clerks while plodders with office skills moved on to become Popes. And many a journeyman remained in servitude to the Master who had a guild-place the journeyman could not attain to for reasons of who can say, but not from lack of skill. Life ain't fair. Sometimes it sucks. Regardless, it always ends.

In the Middle Ages, Journeymen, particularly in Germany, used to hit the road after they completed their basic training as apprentices, as they graduated to journeymen. They donned the duds of their trade and moved from place to place learning from other masters as they travelled, hence, "journeymen." I met one once, and I am delighted and pleased to this day. He was a carpenter. I watched him build a staircase.

The owners of a ghetto flophouse were in constant trouble with the city due to the conditions of the building they owned, it being in danger of falling oversideways; and yet the owners of the building were somehow able to forestall condemnation of their building over and agian until finally they were forced to at least build a safe staircase up the outside of the building so tenants could reach the second floor somewhat safely. The owners, pathologically cheap, found a young German working illegally in the country, and because they could get him for less than the market price they hired him for the job. He built a staircase that remains one of the finest things I have seen over the course of a long and strange lifetime of hazzard and exultation. It was just some wood cut and hammered and put up the side of a falling down shack. It was just that and a work of beauty the likes of which I have seldom seen before or since. Not El Greco, not Pope Gregory, not Saint Cyril. The man was a wood butcher. His work was... it was the work of Man.

I also knew at the time a master sculptor who worked in wood. He had skill the likes of which I have seldom seen in living artists. Who else can I think of who rivals his skill as a sculptor? I can think of no one. His art work is stunning for its skill and aesthetic value; but the work itself is disgusting in itself, the themes being ugly and hateful. Owning any one of his pieces today would make me a filthy rich guy, and I'd be more than happy to part with them. i got scoffed at for observing at a fete that though he has the skill of a grand master he has no morals. I'm so fuckin' old fashioned. And that was 25 years ago. These days I'm outright cranky. I love the staircase but not the sculpted figures that are truly art.

Our own? What do we do? Our own might well give power of governance to the lady of the Left, Segolene Royal.